Monthly Update
2025 OA+D Celebration Brings Desert-Inspired Design to Life at the Chandler Museum
On November 15, the 2025 OA+D Celebration brought members, designers, students, and supporters together at the Chandler Museum for a day focused on “Sonoran Shapes + Structures: Desert-Inspired Architecture and Design.” The program explored how the desert’s forms, light, and materials continue to shape the evolution of organic architecture.
The morning began with Aris Georges, whose presentation, “Nature, Abstraction, and the Sonoran Desert,” offered a dynamic look at how regional patterns and geometries inform contemporary design thinking. After a catered lunch, OA+D honored Arthur Dyson with the OA+D Lifetime Achievement Award, followed by his thoughtful lecture, “A Life in Organic Architecture.”
The afternoon featured Mark Hammons sharing rare archival imagery from the Annette Del Zoppo Collection documenting Paolo Soleri and the early development of Arcosanti, followed by William B. Scott, Jr.’s engaging exploration of “The Desert Legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright.” The day concluded with a warm and lively gathering of friends and Fellows at a happy hour gathering at the nearby Hop Social Grill.
OA+D extends heartfelt thanks to all sponsors, attendees, volunteers, and supporters who helped make this event possible. Your participation and generosity bring our mission to life.
This year’s Celebration underscored the enduring vitality of organic architecture and the importance of preserving its stories, images, and ideas. If you value this mission, please consider supporting OA+D through membership or a year-end donation—your contribution helps us preserve collections, produce new scholarship, and host programs that keep this legacy alive.
Learn more and support our mission at oadarchives.org.
OA+D NEWS & EVENTS
Call for Archival Donations :: Preserve the Legacy of Organic Architecture
As we reach the end of the year, the Organic Architecture + Design Archives invites donations of materials related to Frank Lloyd Wright, the Taliesin Fellowship, and the wider community of organic architects and designers. As the largest repository dedicated to this movement, OA+D is committed not only to preserving this history but to making it accessible to researchers, students, practitioners, and the public so the ideas and creative work of this legacy remain alive and available to all.
Our collections already include significant holdings such as the William Wesley Peters Box Projects, two original 1910 Wasmuth Portfolios, extensive Taliesin Fellowship archives, original Frank Lloyd Wright drawings, thousands of blueprints, and hundreds of thousands of rare photographs, along with furniture, lamps, artworks, and other historic materials. Each donation we receive strengthens our ability to share these stories through exhibitions, publications, and our growing digital catalog.
For more than a decade, OA+D has been the leading publisher on organic architecture, producing scholarship and educational resources made possible only through the materials entrusted to our care. To continue building an accessible record of this design tradition, we are seeking drawings, photographs, documents, correspondence, models, and other materials connected to Wright, Taliesin, Taliesin Associated Architects, or other organic designers. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, OA+D may provide tax-deductible acknowledgments for material donations.
Your contribution ensures that these irreplaceable materials are preserved responsibly and made accessible for research, study, and future generations of designers and scholars. To discuss a potential donation, please contact us at info@oadarchives.org or visit www.oadarchives.org.
Make an Impact This Giving Tuesday—Support OA+D
December 2, 2025, is "Giving Tuesday," and we invite you to help strengthen the vital preservation, publication, and outreach work of the Organic Architecture + Design Archives. This past year has been one of extraordinary progress—new journals and books released, thousands of archival items preserved, and a successful symposium and exhibition that brought our community together. Your year-end contribution ensures we can sustain this momentum and continue making the rich legacy of organic architecture accessible to all.
Your support directly fuels our core mission: publishing new scholarship in the Journal of Organic Architecture + Design, digitizing rare and important materials for public access, preserving the collections of pioneering organic designers, and developing new exhibitions and educational programs. Every donation, large or small, helps protect this history and inspires future generations. Make your tax-deductible gift today and help power our work in the year ahead.
Last Chance to Pre-Order Lloyd Wright’s Wayfarers Chapel Group Journal
The upcoming double-sized issue of the Journal of Organic Architecture + Design (Volume 13, Number 3)—an 80-page publication featuring more than 70 images—is now in production and will ship in December, just in time for the holidays. If you want to be among the first to receive a copy, now is the time to pre-order.
This special issue is devoted entirely to Lloyd Wright’s Wayfarers Chapel Group—the Chapel, Campanile, Cloisters, Cloisters Garden, and Community House—presented through new research by architectural historian and author Kathryn Smith. Drawing from newly uncovered materials, rare archival sources, and never-before-published photographs and drawings, this landmark study reveals the design evolution behind one of the most poetic works of organic architecture. Smith illuminates how Wright, serving as both architect and landscape architect, fused structure and nature into a unified spiritual vision.
First completed between 1947 and 1957 and removed from its original site in 2024 due to seismic instability, the Wayfarers Chapel Group is preserved here with unprecedented depth and clarity. Active Journal subscribers and Friends of OA+D sustaining members will automatically receive their copies; all others can secure one today by pre-ordering before the issue ships in December.
For questions, contact info@oadarchives.org.